so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (tech, just upgraded to general last month) and everyone keeps telling me i should learn CW. i get why, i see guys on 40m having whole conversations with it and it honestly seems kind of amazing that people can just do that. but i have no idea how to actually start learning it. like do i just memorize the dots and dashes on paper? i tried that once and it felt totally useless because i couldnt actually hear it in my head

someone mentioned the Koch method to me at a hamfest but i didnt really understand what they meant. also heard about morse toad and some other apps but dont know if those are any good or just gimmicks. im not in any hurry to get on the air with it, just want to actually learn it properly this time instead of giving up after a week like last time

forget the dots and dashes on paper thing, seriously. that approach will just get you stuck translating in your head forever. the Koch method is the right idea — basically you learn each character as a sound, not as a pattern you count. start with just two letters, get them to like 90% accuracy, then add another one. the key is learning at a higher speed from the beginning, like 15-20wpm even if the spacing between characters is stretched out. that way you never have to relearn later.

LCWO dot net is free and does exactly this, its been around forever and a lot of people have learned with it. just do like 10-15 minutes a day consistently and you will make progress, way more than doing an hour once a week. the hardest part honestly is just not giving up around the time you hit the letters that sound similar, like B D and 6 all start to blend together for a while but it clicks eventually. took me probably 4 months of daily practice to get to where i could actually copy simple QSOs, so dont expect overnight results

morse toad is actually decent for getting started, i used it on my commute for a while. but what really worked for me was just tuning to a CW frequency and trying to copy even one or two letters out of whatever i heard. felt completely hopeless at first lol but after a while your brain just sort of starts grabbing things. also there are some youtube channels that do slow code practice sessions which helped me more than i expected